The Nasa spacecraft officially “touched” the sun, and it dived into an untested atmosphere known as the corona.
Scientists announced the news on Tuesday during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
The Parker’s solar probe actually flew to the corona in April when the spacecraft approached the eighth day. Scientists say it took a few months to return the data and then a few months to confirm it.
Nour Raouafi, a project scientist at Johns Hopkins University, described the news as “extremely entertaining”.
Because the sun has no fixed position, the corona is where the action is; a closer look at this magnetic field might help scientists better understand solar eclipses that could disrupt life on Earth.
Launched in 2018, Parker was 8m (13m miles) from the center of the sun when it began to cross the rough, uneven border between the sun’s atmosphere and the rising sun. The spacecraft entered and exited the corona at least three times, each of which was a smooth transition, according to scientists.
“The first and most amazing time was less than five hours … Now you can imagine five hours, that doesn’t sound great,” Justin Kasper of the University of Michigan told the media. But he noticed that Parker was traveling so fast that he covered a great distance at that time, traveling over 62 miles (100 km) per second.
The corona appeared to be more dusty than expected, according to Raouafi. Future coral reefs will help scientists better understand the origin of the sun’s atmosphere, he said, and how it heats up and is released into space.
Preliminary data suggest that Parker sank again in the corona during his ninth approach in August, but scientists say more analysis is needed. It came close to a tenth last month.
Parker will continue to draw closer to the sun and penetrate deep into the corona until its final major orbit in 2025.
Recent findings have been republished by the American Physical Society.